[MrVandelay]

Wild Waves and Enchanted Village sold by struggling Six Flags
By Michelle Chapman
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003520209_websixflags11.html
The Associated Press

NEW YORK — Theme-park operator Six Flags, which has been struggling with falling attendance and a large debt load, said today it will sell seven of its 27 parks, including Wild Waves and Enchanted Village in Federal Way, for $312 million.

The parks are being bought by Jacksonville, Fla.-based park operator PARC 7F-Operations. But PARC will simultaneously sell them to Orlando, Fla.-based real-estate investment trust CNL Income Properties, which will then lease the parks back to PARC.

The seven parks are Wild Waves and Enchanted Village; Six Flags Darien Lake in Buffalo, N.Y.; Six Flags Elitch Gardens in Denver; Frontier City and the White Water Bay water park in Oklahoma City; SplashTown in Houston; and Waterworld USA in Concord, Calif.

While the Darien Lake and Elitch Gardens sites will not longer carry the Six Flags brand under the new ownership, any 2007 season passes purchased at the parks will continue to be honored at all Six Flags branded parks for the 2007 season.

The deal is expected to close in March, subject to customary closing conditions.

Six Flags reported last month that 2006 attendance slipped 14 percent from the previous year. In November, the company said third-quarter earnings fell 16 percent to $159.3 million, or $1.08 per share, below Wall Street's expectations. Revenue in that quarter slid 1 percent to $540.7 million.

The sale comes after Six Flags found itself on a management roller-coaster ride in recent years. Mark Shapiro, a former executive at ESPN, became chief executive of the company in December 2005 following a proxy fight led by investor and Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder that resulted in the ouster of former CEO Keirian Burke and other executives.

The company said the sale is part of its strategy to reduce debt and enhance its operational and financial flexibility. Six Flags had total long-term debt of $2.1 billion as of Sept. 3, 2006, when it filed its most recent quarterly report.

Six Flags spokeswoman Wendy Goldberg said the company is not actively looking to sell any more parks.

Combined with the June 2006 sale of land underlying its Houston AstroWorld theme park for $77 million, the sale will result in proceeds of $352 million to be used for debt reduction, according to the company.

Chief Financial Officer Jeff Speed said in a conference call last month that the company considered 2006 a "transition year" due to changes in both management and strategy. CEO Shapiro added that the company increased its television and radio advertising spending, a key driver of attendance, by $30 million this year after being hurt by higher pricing from last-minute buying during its management turnover.

Goldberg said today that weather played a role in the company's drop in attendance last year, but there was "no one cause" for the decline.

She noted that Six Flags is currently focused on getting families back into its parks, which can take some time. Families are viewed by theme parks as a quality source of revenue that tend to spend more.

Six Flags is the owner and operator of 27 North American parks, including the seven it plans to sell. The seven parks drew a collective attendance of 3.6 million in 2006 and generated about $30 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

Shares of Six Flags gained 48 cents, or almost 9 percent, to $5.91 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange after the news.

[MrVandelay]

'06 big sales year for office property in Puget Sound area
By Amy Martinez
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003519193_cresales11.html
Seattle Times business reporter

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2007/01/10/2003519172.gif

When choosing where to buy office property, institutional investors are putting their money on the Puget Sound area.

Sales of office buildings in the region totaled $2.2 billion in 2006, making it the biggest year for commercial real-estate transactions in at least a decade, a report released Wednesday by a brokerage firm shows. Pension funds and real-estate-investment trusts were behind many of the deals.

Institutional investors from throughout the country want to own office property in the area, and they're paying top dollar for it, said John Miller, senior managing director at Cushman & Wakefield in Seattle.

Office property last year sold for an average of $231.37 a square foot, an 8 percent increase from 2005, according to Wednesday's Cushman & Wakefield report. Since 2002, the area's average per-square-foot sales price has risen as much as 52 percent.

Businesses could see their rental rates go up as they renew leases. Investors that pay top dollar are likely to raise rents to recoup their investment and then some, said Wende Sauvage, a Cushman & Wakefield broker.

Rents already are on the rise. The average annual asking rate for premium Class A office space in downtown Seattle hit $29.61 a square foot in the fourth quarter of 2006, up from $26.93 a year ago, the report said. In downtown Bellevue, the rental rate increased to $29.44 from $25.63.

Cushman & Wakefield predicts rents will exceed $36 a square foot in downtown Seattle and $39 a square foot in downtown Bellevue in 2009.

Brokers give numerous reasons for investors' interest in Seattle office property. Chief among them: a diversified economy that includes some of the biggest names in corporate America, solid job growth and reputation as a place where workers want to live.

Last year, Brickman Associates of New York paid $575 a square foot for the Civica Office Commons in Bellevue, a record for the area.

Seattle no longer is flying under the radar of large institutional investors, said Christa Chambers, a senior vice president at KeyBank in Bellevue, which provides loans to real-estate developers and investors.

What's more, she said, Seattle is attracting lenders from outside the area, putting downward pressure on loan pricing.

"It's just supply and demand," she said. "There's a lot of money out there."

[MrVandelay]

Top local office buildings could change hands again
By Seattle Times business staff

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003564373_webbuildings09.html

The investment firm that is buying Equity Office Properties, the region's largest office landlord, is in talks to sell buildings here and in Washington, D.C., to Beacon Capital Partners of Boston, the Wall Street Journal reported this morning.

The Journal, citing a person familiar with the deal, said Blackstone Group's real-estate arm "is close to an agreement" to sell buildings in the two markets for about $6.5 billion.

One real estate source told the Seattle Times on Thursday that the sale may include Equity Office's entire Seattle-area portfolio, capped by the 76-story Columbia Center, the region's tallest building.

Equity Office owns and manages 10 buildings totaling 5 million square feet in Seattle's central business district. In downtwn Bellevue, it owns and manages eight buildings with a total 2.5 million square feet. It also is building a 26-story office tower on Northeast Sixth Street in Bellevue called City Center Plaza.

Blackstone, which this week won a heated bidding war to buy Equity Office for $23 billion, has already reached a deal to sell Equity properties in New York for about $7 billion.

[MrVandelay]

Many Seattle, Bellevue office buildings being sold for second time in 2007
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2007/03/20/2003301758.jpg
By Amy Martinez
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003628226_blackstone210.html
Seattle Times business reporter

Many of the area's most prestigious office buildings are about to be sold for the second time this year, and the chain of transactions likely won't end there. As a result, commercial real-estate brokers are warning businesses to brace for higher rental rates.

Beacon Capital Partners, a Boston real-estate investment company, will become the area's largest office landlord when it buys a portfolio once owned by Equity Office Properties Trust in Chicago. Equity Office was sold last month for $39 billion to New York's Blackstone Group. Blackstone now is selling the Seattle-area portfolio for an undisclosed amount to Beacon Capital, which in turn plans to sell 15 of the 29 properties to the Archon Group of Irving, Texas, say people familiar with the negotiations.

Blackstone's sale to Beacon, and Beacon's subsequent sale to Archon, are expected next month.

That would leave Beacon, which already owns two office buildings in the Seattle area, with nearly 8 million square feet, including about 32 percent of downtown Bellevue's office space and 12 percent of downtown Seattle's, according to an analysis by brokerage firm Grubb & Ellis.

If the flurry of quick resale transactions plays out as planned, 15 properties totaling 3.3 million square feet would get their third new owner this year.

Wende Sauvage, a broker at Cushman & Wakefield in Seattle, says Beacon Capital will hold on to properties where it can raise rents quickly. These include the 76-story Columbia Center in downtown Seattle and the 27-story City Center Bellevue.

"Beacon's M.O. is to take a property that has vacancies or turnover and increase the rental rates to unbelievable levels," Sauvage said. "Once they secure tenants, they flip the assets, so they're not long-term holders," meaning Beacon Capital tends to sell properties within three to five years of buying them.

Beacon Capital declined to discuss its plans for the Seattle area, as did Archon and Blackstone.

Real-estate companies are turning their attention to the area's office market as vacancy rates decline and rents rise.

Lease rates for premium office space rose 9 percent last year in downtown Seattle and 16 percent in downtown Bellevue, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

Investors bet the market will stay strong for at least several years, thanks to a diversified economy, trade ties to Asia and reputation as a place where workers want to live.

Last year, sales of area office buildings totaled $2.2 billion, making it the biggest year for commercial real-estate transactions in at least a decade, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

The whirl of transactions set off by the Equity Office sale ensures 2007 will be another big year.

"Previously, we had Equity Office, which pretty much owned the whole shooting match," said Dale Sperling, president and chief executive of Unico Properties in Seattle.

"Now, Beacon Capital will own part of it, someone else will own part of it, and they may take a piece and sell it off," he said.

Sperling agreed Beacon Capital likely will raise rents. "They prefer to have the best assets. That way, they can lead the market" in lease rates.

Until now, Beacon Capital has been a fairly small player in the Seattle area.

In 2004, it paid $100.7 million, or $187.84 a square foot, for Seattle's former Union Bank of California building.

About a year ago, Beacon bought the Skyline Tower in Bellevue from Unico for $129.8 million, or $317.73 a square foot.

One of the first things it did was raise rents, said Dan Foster, a broker who represents tenants in lease negotiations.

"They buy high and sell even higher," said Gary Carpenter, executive vice president at Bentall Capital, a real-estate adviser based in Vancouver, B.C. "They're good at timing the market."

Beacon seems to have timed it right again, said Greg Smith, chief executive of Urban Visions, who worked with Beacon on the Millennium Tower office-and-condo project in Seattle. "There's been no new office product, it's very expensive to create and there's substantial demand."

Smith said Beacon, after paying top dollar for the properties, will be under pressure to raise rents faster than Equity Office likely would have done. "I don't think Equity Office was very aggressive in pushing rents up in Seattle," he said.

Rents can be raised as leases come up for renewal or as new tenants move in. Since most leases are five years, 20 percent tend to be renegotiated each year.

Foster, the tenant broker, said the construction of more than 1.7 million square feet of office space in downtown Bellevue is "the light at the end of the tunnel." In downtown Seattle, two office buildings under construction would add nearly 800,000 square feet. The added space will give tenants some leverage against Beacon in lease negotiations, he said.

Beacon Capital, formed in 1998, buys real estate on behalf of large institutional investors — among them the University of Washington, which invested $15 million with Beacon in three funds between 2002 and 2006.

Beacon says it focuses on places with educated work forces and large clusters of colleges, universities and teaching hospitals, because it considers them less vulnerable to the ups and downs of real estate. It also owns properties in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, London, Paris, and Washington, D.C.

Real-estate observers say Beacon brings a different attitude to managing its properties than Equity had.

Equity Office was publicly held, making it more likely to drop rents during economic downturns to keep buildings full — and shareholders happy — in the belief some revenue was better than no revenue.

Privately held Beacon is more inclined to "sit on vacant space and wait for the right deal to come along," said Thomas Bohman, a broker with Cushman & Wakefield in Bellevue.

Archon Group, the Texas company buying a portion of the Equity Office portfolio from Beacon, manages investments totaling more than $22 billion in North America, Asia and Europe.

An affiliate of Goldman Sachs, Archon already owns the First & Stewart Building in downtown Seattle and CenterPoint Corporate Park in Kent.

Archon's new tenants are likely to face higher rent, too.

"Even if they were the nicest, most reasonable building owners in the world, rents would go up," Foster said. "They're buying these buildings at more than what it would cost to build them, so that puts upward pressure on rents."

[MrVandelay]

Alhadeff family sells 5 buildings in downtown Seattle
By Amy Martinez
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003642501_buildingsales30.html
Seattle Times business reporter

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2007/03/29/2003642385.gif

The Alhadeff family has sold five downtown Seattle buildings — most of them dating to the turn of the 20th century — for $62 million to Principal Financial Group of Des Moines, Iowa.

One of the more notable buildings is the Coliseum Theater, which opened during World War I and is now home to a Banana Republic store.

The Alhadeff family put the portfolio up for sale last year, saying it needed to diversify assets held in trust for its members.

"It's a good time to be selling real estate," Ken Alhadeff said Thursday. "We had a price point that we needed to meet to trigger this decision, and we were able to achieve it with a buyer we feel positive about."

Real-estate investors from throughout the country have been paying top dollar to increase their presence in the Seattle area as vacancy rates for commercial properties decline and rents rise to levels not seen since the 2001 recession.

"Without question, they're taking advantage of a very hot real-estate market," Leigh Callaghan, a broker with Colliers International in Seattle, said of the Alhadeff family. "We've got to be getting close to the top."

Alhadeff said selling the Coliseum was "emotionally very difficult" — his late grandfather Joe Gottstein helped develop it.

But he noted that because the theater is on the National Register of Historic Places, its new owner couldn't tear it down to make way for a modern building.

What's more, Alhadeff said, "there are no air rights to the building, so no one can build on top of it." He added: "Not being able to say I own it isn't as important to me as knowing it will continue to be the spectacular visual place that it is."

The sale also includes the Broderick Building, one of downtown's first developments after the Great Fire of 1889, and the Broadacres Building, home to a Nordstrom Rack store, as well as the MiKen and MJA buildings.
Alhadeff said Principal is not expected to make major changes to the buildings; attempts to confirm that with Principal were unsuccessful Thursday.

The Alhadeff family is known for having owned the Longacres Racetrack in Renton, which opened for horse racing in 1933. The family sold the property to Boeing in 1990.

Ken Alhadeff, 58, said he remains chairman of Elttaes Enterprises (that's "Seattle" spelled backward) but is turning over day-to-day management to his 31-year-old son, Aaron Alhadeff.

He said he'll continue to operate the family's charitable foundation and pursue his passion for producing musicals, both in New York and Seattle.

The family still owns Majestic Bay Theatres in Ballard. Alhadeff said the family is looking for new investments, including real estate.

[Black Box]

I love the Coliseum and Monorail Espresso, which is located on the side of the Coliseum. They have great coffee. I don't even know what label they carry, but it's my second favorite, after Vivace. Downtown is doing very well, nice to see these updates.

[MrVandelay]

Exchange Building, former home to Seattle stock exchange, sold
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003670499_bizbriefs18.html

Pacific Northwest

The historic Exchange Building, originally built to house a Seattle stock exchange, has been purchased by The Ashforth Co. for $80.6 million, or $273 a square foot. That's almost $100 a square foot more than the seller, Texas-based Crescent Real Estate, paid for it in February 2005.

At 821 Second Ave., the 23-story building is the first Seattle purchase for Ashforth, a commercial real-estate investor, developer and owner headquartered in Stamford, Conn. Ashforth, which owns numerous properties in Portland, partnered with GE Asset Management in the purchase.

The Exchange Building was completed in 1929 and converted to office space after that year's stock-market crash wiped out the need for a stock exchange. It was renovated in 2000, and its 295,432 square feet of "AA" space are fully occupied. King County is the anchor tenant.

[MrVandelay]

Clise Properties puts Denny Triangle land up for sale
By Amy Martinez
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003749314_webcliseweb16.html
Seattle Times business reporter

Clise Properties, the real-estate arm of one of Seattle's most prominent families, has put more than 12 acres in downtown's Denny Triangle area up for sale.

Billed as the chance to change Seattle's skyline, the sale is expected to set off a bidding frenzy. The land consists of about seven blocks now mostly made up of parking lots.

The Clise family began buying the land after the Great Fire of 1889. The decision by CEO Alfred Clise to sell the land comes a year after the city increased height limits in the Denny Triangle and other areas of downtown to encourage more commercial and residential development.

It also comes at a time of declining office vacancy rates and rising rents, prompting real-estate investors nationwide to pick Seattle as the most attractive place to buy and own commercial property.

[MrVandelay]

Microsoft buys 28-acre parcel from Nintendo
By Benjamin J. Romano
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003773038_webnintendoland03.html
Seattle Times technology reporter

Nintendo of America is feeding a large chunk of land in Redmond to Microsoft, which seems to have a nearly insatiable appetite for office and parking spaces lately.

The unused, 28-acre parcel sits between Nintendo's North American headquarters and Microsoft's RedWest campus, which houses its MSN online unit.

In a brief statement today announcing the sale to Microsoft, Nintendo was quick to note that disposing of the land has "no connection with the company's recent relocation of its sales and marketing division to Silicon Valley and Manhattan."

The company's headquarters will remain in Redmond. In fact, Nintendo is planning to grow its employment in Washington, which currently stands at about 1,000 people, in areas including testing and distribution, according to the statement. The property is north of Northeast 51st Street and west of Highway 520 and provides "a natural fit" with Microsoft's RedWest campus, said Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos.

Microsoft's long-term plans for the property are unclear. Gellos said it could provide office space for about 2,000 people. But the company is focused now on the three-year, $1.3 billion campus expansion currently under way on both sides of Highway 520. The project will grow the Redmond campus by about a third.

This acquisition was not contemplated as part of that expansion, "but it certainly has that potential," Gellos added.

In the short-term, the 300-space lot on the property will help ease the over-crowded parking situation at RedWest.

A short distance south, Microsoft is building an underground parking garage to hold 5,000 vehicles.

Neither company disclosed the sales price. The property was assessed for 2008 at more than $26.5 million, according to King County records. Nintendo bought the property in 1987 for $601,277.

The transaction is set to close in mid-July.

[MrVandelay]

accidental double post

[MrVandelay]

If Nintendo does stay in redmond, as the article states, I wonder where they will build? Overlake is pretty much built up, and it wouldn't make sense for them to sell their place. Maybe they might actually move to highlands or dare to say it downtown bellevue?

[MrVandelay]

One buyer, 40 acres: a quiet revolution in Sodo
By Bob Young
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003797773_liebman20m.html
Seattle Times staff reporter

Henry Leibman's SODO Properties (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2007/07/19/2003797797.pdf)

Henry Liebman makes a lot of people nervous. City officials, labor leaders, Port commissioners.

An immigration lawyer-turned-developer, Liebman has quietly assembled acre after acre in Seattle's Sodo neighborhood, becoming that area's largest private-property owner -- in a creative, some say cunning, way.

Using an obscure federal program that swaps green cards for job-creating investments, Liebman has tapped foreign investors for $150 million he has used to buy just more than 40 acres south of Safeco Field.

Liebman's vision for the area concerns those who say they want to protect blue-collar jobs and a grimy bit of Seattle's identity. Where there are now forklift operators, Liebman envisions software engineers; where there are low-rent warehouses, Liebman sees high-end retail.

Already, he has told a large freight-hauling company, MacMillan-Piper, that he intends to more than double its rent. That may drive MacMillan-Piper and its 200 employees out of Seattle, said company President Steve Stivala.

Industrial jobs are important, city leaders say, because they employ a quarter of Seattle's workers, pay above the city average and attract people with varying levels of education. They keep Seattle's fingernails a little dirty, while maintaining the city's history and strength as a trading port.

Liebman's plans could be "devastating" to the Port of Seattle, said Port Commissioner Alec Fisken.

"I don't think it's just a fear. I think Henry is clear about wanting to bring in non-industrial users," added City Councilmember Sally Clark.

The city is now trying to figure out how best to protect industrial jobs in a rapacious real-estate market. The Planning Commission this week recommended some first steps. Mayor Greg Nickels will follow with his own proposal. Then it's up to the City Council, which has the final say on how land is used.

Liebman says a break with the past is inevitable in Sodo because economic forces bigger than his business are causing "traditional metal-benders" to leave. "We don't view it as us driving anyone out ... We view it as replacing someone who is going to go anyway."

A good prospect

Sitting in his office overlooking a Burger King and weigh station, wearing khakis and sneakers, Liebman, 55, tells this story with a smile:

Two investors from Zimbabwe paid a visit to his office and asked, "Where's the welcome kit?"

" 'Hello' is your welcome kit," he told them.

Liebman is now second only to Paul Allen in amassing large swaths of property in a single Seattle neighborhood.

With a poster of Jimi Hendrix dominating his office, Liebman calls himself "an aged hippie."

He moved to Seattle in 1970 to study political science at the University of Washington and escape brutal summers in his native Florida. After selling Panamanian tapestries for a few years, Liebman earned a law degree from the University of Puget Sound and soon found himself specializing in immigration law.

Now he doesn't practice law at all.

In the early 1990s Liebman learned about a new federal program aimed at attracting foreign investments to American businesses. Pushed by Democrats such as Sen. Edward Kennedy and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush, the EB-5 program works like this: Foreigners can gain green cards by investing $1 million in a business that directly creates at least 10 jobs, or by investing $500,000 in a "regional center" -- an area targeted for economic growth -- and producing 10 jobs directly and through spin-off jobs.

Liebman applied to create a Seattle regional center in 1996 and his proposal was backed by then-Mayor Norm Rice's economic-development director Mary Jean Ryan, now a high-ranking Nickels aide.

Liebman's company, American Life, didn't really take off until 2003, when legal issues regarding the program were resolved in federal court. In all, American Life has attracted 303 foreign investors, making it one of the top EB-5 participants in the country. He is applying to create regional centers in Tacoma and Everett.

The typical investor in American Life is a self-made businessperson over 40, Liebman said. Most live in Florida and other retirement hot spots. They come from 26 countries, but mostly South Korea, England, India, Japan and the Netherlands.

Investors get 70 percent of the rent and capital gain from properties they invest in; American Life gets the rest.

Some of Liebman's investors have never set foot in Seattle. Michael Green is a retired British executive who now lives in Florida, where he spends his days golfing. Although Green has never seen his Sodo property, he said Liebman's business plan convinced him "Seattle was a good investment prospect."

Betting on the future

Liebman's strategy amounts to a big bet on Sodo's future.

He believes the area is destined to be more urbane, with its proximity to downtown, quick access to highways, and two light-rail stations coming in 2009 when Sound Transit opens its downtown-to-Sea-Tac line.

"When we were kids, you could hop on a freeway and be anywhere in 20 minutes. Now that 20 minutes is an hour, so people everywhere are trading places, the rich are moving into cities and the poor are moving further away," he said.

As the area changes, Liebman tells investors, they'll see a significant increase in the values of their properties.

Liebman wants to turn his larger properties into corporate campuses for technology firms that want to be near Microsoft and Amazon.com.

To pull off his vision of five-story office complexes, he needs the city to allow larger buildings in industrial zones. The area south of the stadiums is reserved mainly for industrial use; office buildings are allowed, but severely limited in size.

He would also like the city to redefine "industry" to include software development. Together, the two changes would let him carry out his plan.

Pushing values upward

Liebman has operated in recent years with little publicity or controversy. But in April he completed a deal that put a bull's-eye on his back.

He paid $13.5 million for five acres on Sixth Avenue South where MacMillan-Piper loads and unloads about 5,000 cargo containers a month for such companies as Starbucks and Weyerhaeuser.

MacMillan-Piper's rent is below-average for Sodo, Liebman said, and he plans to raise it 60 to 70 percent when the company's lease expires in 2010.

"Our business can't afford those kinds of rents," said Stivala, the company's president. "That would drive us elsewhere."

Stivala said he would like to stay in Seattle, where the company was founded 38 years ago, ideally in Sodo, near rail lines and the Port.

But that might be difficult because Liebman is pushing property values upward with his buying spree.

If MacMillan-Piper and other blue-collar companies move -- even if just to Tacoma or the Kent Valley -- Stivala says Seattle would lose some of its soul.

"You'd lose a portion of the city's backbone," he said. "You'd lose a work ethic and a roll-up-your-sleeve mentality and family-wage jobs."

Fisken, the Port commissioner, and Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis worry MacMillan-Piper's plight will be repeated over and over in Sodo, with Liebman raising rents and chasing industry out.

"He's creating a cycle and he knows it. It's an investment strategy on his part," Ceis said.

The Planning Commission, which advises the mayor and council, issued a report Wednesday urging them to leave industrial zoning in place.

Local labor leaders are also fretting. The King County Labor Council is holding a July 30 summit to discuss strategies for preserving industrial lands not just in Seattle, but in Pierce and Snohomish counties, where Liebman hopes to expand.

"Mr. Liebman's scheme is one of the more insidious moves to convert industrial properties in Seattle to commercial use," said Dave Freiboth, head of the labor council. "We're going to marshal our forces to push back."

An unapologetic view

Liebman takes a long, unapologetic view of his goals.

He tells investors that Sodo's zoning is not likely to change for at least five years -- but change is coming.

That's why he was able to buy so many vacant properties in the first place, he said. Manufacturing plants are closing and consolidating. Founders of small businesses are retiring and cashing out rather than handing over operations to their children.

Local government is already encroaching on MacMillan-Piper's turf, Liebman notes.

City officials have encouraged downtown condo towers and they're considering allowing taller office and residential buildings blocks from MacMillan-Piper's headquarters.

If they really want to protect Sodo industry, Liebman said, why did local officials put two sports stadiums and a light-rail line in the neighborhood? And why has the city permitted properties to switch from industrial use to something else?

If officials are so determined to preserve the area's industrial tradition, Liebman said, "why aren't they buying properties around here?"